


The Truth Will Out

by silverr



Series: The Adventures of Vem and Daw [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Companionable Snark, Developing Friendships, Gen, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, One-Sided Flirting, Silver Fox, Somewhat Hardboiled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24775708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/silverr
Summary: Detective K H Daw has a secret. So does his utterly insufferable charge November March.
Relationships: Detective with Secret Psychic Powers & Fake Psychic Crime Consultant
Series: The Adventures of Vem and Daw [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021224
Comments: 26
Kudos: 19
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



.

.

"There was just something about the building that drew me," November March was saying to the thicket of microphones and video cameras clustered around him. "An aura of old evil. I knew it had to be swept away before we could do good."

I was watching this spectacle with my old partner Haldis Jansson. She'd picked a shaded spot apart from the crowd where the bare ground was relatively free of rubble, as we didn't see any reason to muck up the wheels of my fancy new chair. Haldis murmured, "Another catchy caption and pretty picture for the news."

I adjusted the sling on my arm but didn't say anything. No question the media was feeding March's ego, cooing over him with phrases like "a Korean-Latino Adam Lambert with psychic superpowers," but March himself—who was still constantly urging everyone to call him "Vem," as if that was less ridiculous than his full name—wasn't shy about playing up his pop-idol good looks, either. For the groundbreaking ceremony today he'd chosen a lustrous silver-gray jacket, white shirt, and tight black jeans that had more than one reporter glassy-eyed and drooling. 

If only the blurb jockeys knew the real story. 

Captain Forester, who was standing behind March like a half-proud, half-incredulous parent, caught my eye and scowled faintly, as if she too was psychic and could read my traitorous thoughts. 

Not that she needed to: I had grumbled often enough since the day, several weeks earlier, when she had called me into her office, said, "I hate to do this to you," then handed me a file. 

That phrase, with its undertone of _Better you than me,_ had helped me brace myself, but even then, opening the folder had still delivered a gutpunch.

The face in the photo had light brown skin, feline features, stunning blue-green eyes, black hair, a neatly trimmed goatee, and a "Come taste me" half-smile. That wasn't the problem: it was that the face was nearly identical to what I had been seeing in half-remembered dreams and visions for weeks. "Who is this?" I had asked, staring at the nonsense words under the photo: _November June March._

"A very very VIP's son," Forester had said. "We need to keep November out of trouble for a few days. A week at most." 

Here I'd thought that I'd been dreaming of my much younger self, back when my hair was black instead of white: learning that it was someone else had been like the weightless moment at the top of a thrill ride hill. I had paged through the file; multiple DUIs and violations of public decency in posh international locations. "You want me to babysit a snot-nosed rich kid?"

"The 'kid' is twenty-three," Forester had said. "Don't think of it as babysitting; pretend it's witness protection."

It was no fun if I waved the white flag too soon. "Why not have Jansson do it?" I asked. "She's better at this sort of thing than I am."

"And what sort of thing is that?" Forester folded her hands; her voice was as smooth as a freshly-honed razor.

"Handling delicate situations."

Forester was silent.

"I have cases," I said weakly.

"All of them cold." She unfolded her hands and began to sort the scree of paperwork on her desk. "I'll try to get a laptop set up for you with copies of your files and some data you can sift through." 

"I hate laptops. Plinky little keys and teeny-tiny screens and that infuriating little square of Where the Fuck is the Cursor."

"A touch-pad, Daw, it's called a touch-pad." She paper-clipped some things, and then shredded a page of some other thing. "Well, it's your choice: either join us in this century, or take a book to read while you're there. Something long."

"Fine, fine. Send the damn laptop. But make sure whoever sets it up copies my whole cold cases folder."

She didn't look up, but she did make a note. Maybe. She was probably writing _Daw is a fucking pain in the ass._ "Any other questions?"

I sighed. "Which safe house is he at?" 

"Emperor Suite at the Golden T."

I should have known. The Exalted Imperial, commonly referred to by lowly serfs like us as the Golden Turd, was the place the most crusty of the uppermost crust went when mere ostentation wouldn't do. "So security is taken care of at least twice over?"

"Yeah," Forester said, and finally looked up at me. "Look, all you have to do is keep November from doing anything that would embarrass his father." 

"Such as," I referred to the rap sheet, "having public sex with three other people on a dance club stage?"

"I know you feel this is a shit assignment," Forester said, "and I won't pretend that it's the best use of your time, but this is a quid pro quo situation driven by politics. The brownie points we'll get will benefit the entire city."

"How?"

"Cutting the red-tape holding up Lower Sixth and Union."

Well, didn't that just slap my tantrum? I could hardly stand in the way of finally converting that unused monstrosity into a women's shelter and homeless housing.

I tossed November's folder onto her desk. "Well then, ma'am, tell the mighty whoevers I'm honored to serve."

##  _._

The doorman at the Exalted Imperial, unimpressed by both my badge and the letter on ambassadorial cardboard I carried, made me feel like a lice-ridden unwashed derelict despite my fresh white shirt, dark gray funeral suit, and ten-year old tie. I bit back the comments I wanted to make about bespoke uniforms and the quality of the leather in my shoulder holster, which was too bad. Those comments had ghost pepper levels of burn.

Golden Turd snobbery was maintained by a second Exalted Imperial who, with wrinkled nose and pursed lips, led me to a private elevator. 

When the doors opened on the top floor, half the large men who lined the hallway had their weapons drawn; the rest were tensed for action. 

I stood absolutely still and said, "One four two dash eight five seven. Guillermo is my contact. My badge is in my inside left breast pocket. I have a firearm in a shoulder holster."

One of the large men, presumably Guillermo, tapped something into his wristwatch, then nodded. "He's good. Exit the elevator, detective."

The rest of the action movie extras lowered their guns.

I murmured, "Well that was exciting," hoping to get the elevator operator to unpurse or at least unwrinkle, but he gave me nothing.

I followed Guillermo down the hall past several unmarked doors; at the second to the last, Guillermo stopped and knocked softly.

The door was opened by yet another dark suited action movie extra. After an exchange in a language I didn't follow, Guillermo left and Action Man led me across the high-ceilinged foyer, through a room stuffed with more antique furniture and gilt than Versailles, down a narrow butler's pantry hallway, past a conference room with a huge table, and finally to what looked like a living room furnished in mid-Century Modern.

A dark-haired young man in a blue robe stood on a balcony outside the far glassed wall, looking down on the little people below, and while I couldn't say what I had expected a scion's son to be wearing, a blue silk kimono with cranes and white chrysanthemums seemed fairly on-brand. 

"Sir," Action Man said, and the kid turned.

I had been prepared for March's non-WASPy good looks, of course, having seen his photograph, but not his air of simmering mischief—though, given his arrest record, that wasn't surprising either. "You're not room service," he said, with almost comically arch amusement. 

Ah, youth. "No, I'm Detective Daw."

"Well," March said, standing up and sauntering toward me in a way that allowed plenty of display time for the low-slung black mesh underwear framed by his unbelted kimono. "I had no idea the police department delivered." He held out his hand and said, "Call me Vem." He batted his lashes in a way we both knew was ridiculous, and added, "or Ganymede."

The kid had balls, I'd give him that. "Cut the crap, March. I'm not a snack." 

"Sir, yes sir!" March said, saluting.

I looked at Action Man. "I guess I'll take it from here."

"Am I in trouble again?" March asked, "or are you here to babysit me?"

"It's only babysitting if you act like a baby."

March looked surprised, and briefly hurt. "Well, whatever. You can leave. My father put more than enough prison guards here to keep me from doing anything fun."

"It doesn't make sense to me either, but I'm going to stay and do my job."

March eyed me again. "Just so you know, you've got a Zeus vibe I really dig, what with the white beard and the deep voice and all, so I plan to flirt with you non-stop."

"Knock yourself out," I said. "Although if you need it to lead anywhere, you're better off calling the concierge and requesting something from the special menu."

March suppressed a smile. "I might just do that."

.

The room service waiter was built like a Tom of Finland character, a pyramid of bulge and muscle wedged into a custom made uniform. He didn't hesitate when March ordered him to wheel the cart into the bedroom, but left less than three minutes later.

March sauntered out after him and threw himself, half lounging, onto a couch across from where I sat. "He was cute, wasn't he?" he asked. "Was he your type?"

"I didn't notice."

"Aren't you supposed to pay attention to things like that?" March asked, narrowing his eyes. "To make sure no assassins get in here and kill me?"

Assassins. _Please._ "That's what the suits in the hall are for," I said.

March made a tsking sound and leaned his head on his arm. "Really? You're pulling the 'Not my job' excuse?" 

_Fuck_. March's skin was starting to glow like a farolito, and the subtle blue and purple streaks in his dark hair were neon. This was _not_ the time for this shit to kick in—and what was it going to show me, anyhow? I doubted the kid was any kind of criminal, and anything outside that was nothing I needed to see. "How many rooms in this suite?" I asked.

March looked up at the ceiling. "Let's see… six bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, a dining room, a conference room, a fitness room with a sauna, foyer, powder room, sitting room, kitchen, media room. Fourteen. Fifteen if you count the sauna as its own room." He looked over at me. "Would _you_ count the sauna?"

I knew damn well how this scenario was supposed to run. I should say I'd never been in a sauna, an admission which would be seen as a green light for a tour and subsequent sweaty grappling. "Are the amenities here lacking?"

March chuckled. _"Amenities?_ How quaint you are. No, I'd say this luxury hotel has adequate amenities." He sat up; his face had a sudden, disarmingly innocent boyishness. "Would you like to watch a movie with me? We could get pizza!" Before I could answer, the boyish innocence evaporated. "Or maybe something else? There are toys in the Jade Room. We could start with the nipple clamps."

"How about this," I said. "You go to the Jade Room, and stay there."

"And you'll join me?"

"No, I'm going to make some phone calls." And maybe pass out, I thought, because every time March moved he left contrails. "Call room service again if you get lonely."

.

March stomped off after informing me that his last boyfriend had called him "an alluring incubus," and I went to sit in the Versailles sitting room next to the entrance foyer until my laptop arrived.

When it did, I was not disappointed. Knowing how much I love trawling through data, Forester had not only sent me the files from the computer at my desk, but a deep scoop, with pictures, of ME data going back almost ten years and covering all of the city's morgues. Of course, most of the identifying information about the victims was encrypted into garbage letters because the laptop wasn't on the station's internal network, but I had COD and photos and key crime scene data and basic demographic, and that was good enough. 

I loved doing data analysis, because it felt the right way, the _only_ way, to catch criminals. Not by sitting around hoping for sparkles and drips and bad dreams, but by putting in the work. Which I did. Sorting and resorting the data, dragging the sieve again and again, up, down, across. Looking for bumps in the data, unexpected mountains or molehills or gullies where there should be plateaus. The hours flew by.

"Look, we got off on the wrong foot." March was posed in the doorway. His body language and demeanor had changed; he was quieter, and seemed shorter. He'd belted his kimono, and although he was still glowing, it was less headache inducing. "What will it take for you to let me sit by you?" he asked. 

"You being less of a gaudy gnat," I said absently, then looked up.

He had folded his arms: classic defensive posture. "Less Dionysian, you mean?"

"I have no idea what that is," I said, which was a lie. Unfortunately I knew the Roarer's domain far too well. 

"You want me to act civilized," March said, with the dead monotone of frequent rehearsal. "Put on reasonable clothes. Go get a book and read quietly somewhere out of sight."

So that's what it was with him. I felt a small twinge of sympathy: his kind of bratty acting out was usually a result of fragile self esteem, from knowing you were very low on the list of what was important to your parents. Tricky to navigate, given our current situation, so I lowered my eyes to my computer screen as I tried to formulate the best response.

Too late: there was a whisper of silk as March left the room.

.

"Is this better?" March was now wearing tan trousers and a tight black t-shirt. 

"Good enough."

Without waiting for an invitation March sat next to me and peered at the screen. "Is that morgue stuff? It looks fascinating." 

A complex-yet-pleasant fragrance wafted from him. I didn't think it was what was making the floor ripple, but I shallowed my breathing just in case. "Not the word I'd pick. Most of the time people die in obvious, easily explainable ways. They crash their cars, get shot or stabbed, overdose on drugs, fall off balconies and cliffs, or simply drop dead while walking their dogs or grocery shopping or gardening or sitting in church."

"Or having sex?" March said. "Do a lot of people die during sex?"

"Not as many as trashy pop culture would have you think." I realized now that I was unlikely to get much done with him hovering over me; if I was lucky, he'd get bored soon and I could get back to my spreadsheets and photos of dead bodies. 

"What's that?" March was pointing to a closeup photo of a circular, vaguely New Age-ish tattoo inked in dark green. Above, a half circle sky arced above the branches and trunk of a sturdy oak; below, roots were cupped in a half-circle of earth. "A tattoo?"

The image began to pulse. A coil of nausea stirred in my guts, rising up like a charmed cobra. "I don't think so." 

"What is it then?" March said. He stretched one arm across the back of the couch, and then leaned close enough to prop his chin on my shoulder. "It sure looks like a tat."

"Do me a favor," I said as the room started to disintegrate. "Grab me a club soda from the minibar?" 

.

There was a cool damp something across my eyes. 

I was lying down. My shoes were off, my jacket had been removed, and my tie loosened.

_Shit._

I pulled the cloth off my eyes. Action Man was watching me from the doorway to the foyer. He nodded and backed out of sight, taking his phone from his pocket.

_Double shit._

"Oh, you're awake. Good." March was sitting on the floor next to my shoulder; in front of him was my laptop, balanced on a tiny, fragile-legged footstool that I suspected should have been in a museum. He turned the laptop so that I could see the screen, and went on, "So I figured out how to do searches. Since that first one was tagged with 'green tattoo,' I looked for everything else that had that tag. And I found a lot more pictures. A bunch were tagged with 'BPDCN,' which I thought was some drug, or a club, but Google said it's—"

"Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm." I sat up with a groan. 

March was taken aback. "And you know that _how?"_

"Because there's a frustrated oncologist wanna-be somewhere in the system who pins that tag on every damn picture of a bruise." My head was throbbing, but at least the psychedelic landscaping had receded.

March reached down and picked up a small bottle of club soda, which he held up to me. "Well, now I'm less impressed with you."

I reached over and closed the laptop, then took the bottle. "Use of department resources is restricted to department members," I said.

March shrugged. "Well, sorry, but I was bored, and you were passed out." He paused for a beat. "We should have called the hotel doctor for you, shouldn't we? I wanted to, but Guillermo said if you didn't need CPR it wasn't really an emergency."

I waved a hand, opened the club soda, and took a swig. Vile stuff when unaccompanied. "It's nothing. Happens to me all the time. No big deal."

"No big deal? Narcolepsy with cataplexy? Are you hallucinating as well?" March asked, then bristled at my astonished stare. "Yes, I know what those words mean. It's insulting that, just like everyone else, you think I'm just an empty-headed party boy. Well, guess what? Rich doesn't always mean stupid. And looking up symptoms is easy." His brow furrowed in concern. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yeah." I carefully lifted the laptop off the priceless piece of furniture. "Let's keep this on an actual table."

"Like in the conference room? Sure." March got up and went to a mirrored cabinet. "Do you want something restorative first? A brandy, or a cocktail? I'll bet you're a classic Old Fashioned man."

"Not while I'm on duty."

"It's after five."

"Doesn't matter. I'm on duty as long as I'm here."

"Seriously? Twenty-four seven?"

"Yes."

"Suit yourself." March started to concoct something for himself that required the opening of many bottles and small jars. "Poor thing," he said. 

I didn't know which one of us March was referring to, but either way I agreed.

.

After a surprisingly homey dinner of roast chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus—I had expected March to order something outrageous, the sort of "tiny chic food sculpture on a huge plate" thing you'd find in an upscale restaurant—March led me to the conference room. The enormous table of exotic wood was lit with soft indirect lighting, while on every wall panels masquerading as abstract art in subdued shades concealed office supplies and equipment.

"Can I stay and watch you work?" March asked. " I'll be quiet." 

This timid yet desperate to please puppy demeanor in place of the earlier How Many Buttons Can I Push? approach suggested that March was trying to latch onto me as a substitute father figure. I was definitely not comfortable in that role, but I decided not to be an arsepot about it. "Yes, you can stay."

We sat down, and I re-opened the laptop to review his search results.

A few were the result of bad tagging, and he'd missed a few by making a syntax error in the search, but all in all, he'd done better than some who'd been in the department a year. "Not bad," I said, and meant it. 

"The weird part is the thumbprints," March said, "or am I seeing something that's not there?"

So much for staying quiet. "Thumbprints?"

March scooted his chair closer and pointed. "See? Isn't that another bruise, on the front of the body?" He pressed his thumb to a spot just below his collarbone. "It's like, right here. I noticed it on a few of them."

An unpleasant squiggle ran up my spine and stabbed at the base of my skull.

"It's opposite the mark on their backs." March held his hand up, palm down, making an inverted U-shape with his thumb and middle finger, then made a pinching gesture. "Like if someone with really big hands grabbed them. Or at least super long fingers. But it has to be from some kind of grabby thing. Maybe a fucking machine clamp?"

I snorted, but scrolled through the anterior photos anyhow, and he was right. Not about the fucking machine clamp, of course, but at least seven victims had a distinct thumbprint-sized greenish bruise on the front of their body, and at least a dozen more had a faint mark that might have been a bruise.

"Was that good?" March asked eagerly. "Did I help?"

"Yes." I began to tag all the photos.

March clapped his hands, then jumped up and went into the hall; the sound of ice clinking into a glass followed.

The marks were too oddly placed and too precisely shaped to be the result of something random. If only the photos were good enough to tell if the mark had bloomed around injection sites! Frustratingly, given the dates of death, none of the bruisees would still be around for closer examination, but without evidence of a puncture wound… I dumped the data from the tagged photos out into a text file, pulled it into a new spreadsheet, and then began to sort on various fields.

"What brand of shampoo and shower gel do you use?" March called out.

I looked up. "What?"

March was standing in the doorway holding a glass containing a honey-colored liquid and a curve of orange peel. "You smell good. I wondered what you use." 

"Generic dish soap," I said. "Whatever brand's cheapest."

"You're joking."

It was too easy to be truly satisfying, but I went with it nevertheless. "Great time saver. I can wash my dirty dishes while I shower. "

"Ha ha. Very funny." March took a sip of his drink. "Actually, if you can, always pick the blue or purple one. Those tints take out yellow tones, so it'll keep your hair and beard pure white, and let Mister Daw stay silver-foxy."

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Anything else I can do?" March asked.

"Give me some privacy," I said slowly, "while I make a phone call."

March nodded, then turned and went down the hall, presumably toward a bedroom.

Forester answered on the seventh ring; there were conversation and glass-clinking noises in the background. "Hang on," she said.

"Did I interrupt a dinner party?" I asked once she'd moved somewhere quieter. 

"No, I'm still at work. Late meeting. How's it going?"

"Fine. He's off getting drunk. Or sulking. Probably both."

"Play nice."

"I have been." I considered not bringing up March's part in what I'd discovered, but decided it was better to be up front. "We were looking through the scoop—"

"We?"

"Yeah, I know, technically it's a violation, but the kid was bored, and the identifying fields are masked. Plus, who's he gonna tell?"

"Fair enough," Forester conceded. "Go on."

"We were looking through the scoop and found something weird." I explained about the tattoo-like marks, and March's grabbing idea. "Only a few had toxes, but with most of the CODs being multiple GSWs or cardiovascular events—"

"It would have been seen as a waste of time. Why didn't anyone pick up on this bruising sooner?"

"Because, at first glance there's no common thread," I said carefully.

"Other than that people who were once alive died with a little green tree on their back." She paused: I could almost hear the coin drop. "First glance?"

"Right. So I was playing with the data, and it just hit me," I said, "we've got men, women, young, old, a range of ethnicities and body types, scattered all over the city."

"Nothing odd about that," she said.

"True. But what is odd is that nearly every victim was looked at by a different ME. In a few cases I happen to know it was when the regular ME was on vacation. I think the deaths were carefully scheduled, and deliberately random."

"Shit." Forester said quietly. "Shit, shit, shit." 

I waited.

"I can't decide if your knack for patterns that no one else notices is a blessing or a curse," she said.

Of course she couldn't. It was always both, like ice so cold it burns.

"Anyone in particular you'd like assigned to this?" she asked.

New topic. Good, especially since I had already given it some thought. "Novich. He's pretty well inked."

"So you think the marks _are_ tattoos after all?"

"No, but it never hurts to cross a possibility more firmly off the list. And who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's some new tat tech. An underground procedure. Radiation branding, hemp decal, metallic goat jizz." I said this, even though I didn't think I was wrong, and neither did Forester. We both knew it's usually best to go by the book, even if you're itching to skip past the boring chapters.

"Let's hope it's that simple," she said, "and not something else."

And then, barely aware that I was speaking aloud, I heard myself say, "I'm thinking the kid could tag along while I start looking into this."

.

.

_© 2020 First post 30 June; revised 6 Jul 2020_


	2. Chapter 2

.

.

Of course, I didn't think they'd actually go along with it.

I'd stayed up late, watching the first ten minutes of some ridiculous movie with March until he fell asleep, then crawling, still sober, into one of the empty bedrooms and sinking into blissfully dreamless sleep. When I woke, early, I found that the menswear pixies had left me presents. Which was good, as the clothes I'd slept in were far from daisy-like. After verifying that the kid was still conked out in the Jade Room—he was curled in on himself, gripping the covers as if afraid the bed was going to throw him off—I then checked with the current Guillermo (whose name was Yuri) to make sure no one except the pixies had snuck in or out during the night. 

Satisfied everything was under control, I showered and put on my fresh duds, squinted at a coffee maker until it produced a cup of heavenly brown morning juice, then sat down in the conference room to finesse my Mysterious Bruises spreadsheet a bit more.

Forester called as I was pouring my second cup.

It turned out the meeting she'd been at the night before was a high-level palm-greasing session that March's father had also attended. As she told it, she'd jokingly told him about the proposed ride-along, assuming that March senior would laugh and also find it ridiculous. To her astonishment, the ambassador had proclaimed it an excellent idea, saying, "November has never shown any interest in anything but spending money and having sex with the wrong people. It's about time he started learning how the real world works." When Forester had pointed out that investigative work could be extremely dangerous, the ambassador had replied, "So is taking drugs and sucking the cocks of strangers, which my son has chosen to do for a decade, in full defiance of my wishes and with no respect for our family name. Well, he's an adult, as he keeps telling me, so it's about time he learned that his actions have consequences."

After relaying this conversation to me, Forester added, "I got the impression… " She hesitated.

"He'd give us a medal if we crossed the kid off his balance sheet?" I said. "Yeah, don't forget, once the funeral's over, the dead rarely inconvenience the living." It was harsh, but I didn't care. March Senior might be a great palm-greaser, but in my book he was now just the standard-issue shitty rich parent.

Forester must have thought so too, because she let my comment slide. "Where is November now?" she asked.

"Sleeping. I doubt he'll roll out of bed before one or two." On the one hand, the kid's old man was garbage and if I could help it I didn't want to give him a damn thing, but I also didn't want to keep the kid cooped up for a whole week. "We'll come in sometime this afternoon so I can get the files on the laptop backed up to the computer on my desk. Check in with Novich, maybe do some follow up with the families."

I knew Forester, and knew she was following my line of thinking. "Fresh city air and safe, low-key activities," she said. "November will be so bored he'll be happy to go back to the Golden T."

I grunted. "I doubt it." I was about to hang up when I remembered to ask, "Can you make sure the Guillermo of the Day—his name is Yuri—and his black suits know that I'm allowed to take the kid out on a field trip?"

.

March shuffled down the hall toward the conference room a little past eleven, puffy-eyed and tousle-haired and wrapped in a vermilion smoking jacket. 

"Morning, sunshine," I said as he slumped into one of the conference room chairs. I snagged a bottle of water, then set it on the table in front of him. "Hydrate."

"Aren't you chipper?" March winced as he screwed off the bottle top. "Call room service. Order red ginseng tea and buttered amaranth toast with chia." After swallowing nearly all the water in one long swig, he said, "You can get something for yourself, too."

He consumed the tea and toast as though they were his last meal before trudging to the gallows. "What's on the schedule for today?" he asked. "More boredom?"

"If you want, you can come to the CSB with me today," I said, polishing off the last of my eggs Florentine. "Watch me input those green bruises you found as a new case."

He perked right up after that, so I decided not to tell him that the case likely would be suspended until we had a fresh lead in the form of a fresh corpse.

.

It took several phone calls and rounds of Talk to the Hand before I was allowed to take March—who had swathed himself in a huge scarf and trench coat, and then made himself even more conspicuous with huge sunglasses and a brimmed hat—out of the Exalted Imperial.

I had planned to call for a cab, but March informed me that there were drivers that would take us anywhere we needed to go. "Behind bullet-proof glass," he added. 

Apparently he wasn't over the assassin thing. I decided to indulge him.

March appeared to be fascinated by the Citizens' Services building from the moment we climbed the stairs up to the entrance. Delighted by the revolving doors, awed by security's futuristic screening equipment, he flirted with the guards who patted us down, gawked at my gun, and found the very idea that I had to sign him in for a visitor pass hilarious. "How many people have you killed?" he asked in a stage whisper as we rode up the elevator.

"No one today."

We wove through the halls to the squad room. At my desk, March shed his "disguise" to reveal jeans and a gray cashmere sweater. I handed him two semi-clean mugs and told him to get us coffee.

As he walked away, looking around at the fluorescent lighting and the green walls as though he were inspecting an archeological dig, I called Shelayne in IT to see if she could get the files from the laptop copied over to my account or something. 

"Or something," she said. "What's in it for me?"

"String of tanzanites."

"Liar. I'll be up in ten. Read me the numbers on your equipment stickers."

"Who's that guy?" Haldis had dropped into the chair next to my desk, and was watching March navigate to the coffee machine.

"Consultant." 

"Really?" She took her eyes off March long enough to drill them into me. "Since when?"

"Today," I said. "Special case," I said. 

March returned with the two mugs, which he set down carefully after I cleared some space on the desk. "Interesting paint on the walls in here," he said. "Gritty celadon?" He was ignoring Haldis, who was looking up at him with an expression I'd never seen on her face before.

"Haldis Jansson," she said, sticking out her hand. "My nickname is 'Braids' because of these." She patted the thick grey-blonde ropes on the back of her head.

"Pleased to meet you," March said, although I noticed he shook her hand as if it was an inexplicable new ritual he wasn't sure he was performing correctly, and didn't offer his name. 

Just then Shelayne appeared with a cat o'nine cables draped around her neck. She unwound a few and began plugging them between the back of my computer and the laptop. "You gonna be working remotely again?" she asked me. "Using this laptop?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

The three of us watched as she clicked and clacked and tapped and typed; in a few minutes she did something that made my computer screen go black.

"All done," she said as she disconnected her cables. "Everything should be in the right place when you restart. I also set it up to sync automatically from now on whenever you're in the building."

"Thank you," I said. "You are a goddess."

"Save your words, K," she said as she walked away. "I'll be waiting on those jewels."

We should have left then, but I wanted to see a mapping of where the marked victims had died. As March stood behind me to watch, I pulled up the spreadsheet I'd created at the Exalted Imperial, re-titled it with its shiny new case ID, and then started writing a query to pull the locations from the spreadsheet and mark them on a city map.

"So, what are you here to consult on?" Haldis asked March.

"Some strange deaths." 

I half turned to look up at March; he was looking down at me like a five year old who'd lost his parents in a crowded amusement park. I had no idea what was going on: he didn't seem like the type to have social anxiety. "Patty was my partner for seventeen years," I said to him, thinking it would be reassuring. If I trusted her, he could trust her as well. "She's one of my best friends. Knows me better than anyone."

"Yeah, I've even seen him naked a few times," Patty chipped in, reaching over to pat my cheek.

"Good for you," March said, scathingly enough to turn heads in a two-desk radius.

"Okay then," Haldis said, giving me a pitying look as she stood and walked away.

March slunk into the vacated chair, clasped his hands, and stared down at the floor.

And what did I do? Well, I did the reasonable thing, the only thing, I could. I pretended I hadn't seen the jealous outburst, and started sorting the paperwork in my inbox.

The map took twenty minutes to complete. As we waited, March scrutinized and commented on every item on my desk, from my stapler and my letter opener to the menagerie of tiny greenstone animals hiding behind the paper clips. He had just opened my top drawer when the map redrew, pimpled with tiny red dots.

"What happens now?"

"Now… " Now we should have gone back to the Golden Turd, except that, as I watched, a new dot appeared at Lower Union and Sixth, pulsing green with a bass beat and so bright it looked like the pixels were trying to burn their way out of the screen. I didn't have to look at my spreadsheet to know that it did not represent an address I had gathered from the morgue data: something new was happening there, or had happened, or would happen.

I needed to go there as soon as I could.

"You're going to go to one of those dots, aren't you?" March said. "I want to go with."

So much for him going back to the hotel. Well, what was the worst that could happen? We'd either run into whoever was making the marks, or find a body, or stop someone from dying. All good, and it'd be more fresh air, but hardly on Forester's list of safe, low key activities. 

On the other hand, I did have a gun, and if we were lucky we'd be able to call for backup before anything happened that'd make March's father happy. "Here," I said, putting my finger over the green dot. "We'll check this location out."

"Why?" March frowned at the map. "What's there?"

"Old meatpacking plant near the center of the aggregation of dots," I said. "The city bought the building, and planned to put it to good use, but the project's been stalled until the various committees stop snarling at each other."

"So?"

"So because the building's vacant but not easily trespassed, it's not monitored. All of which makes it a good base of operations."

"For _what?"_

Yes, well, that was the question, wasn't it? "Let's go get a warrant."

.

The biggest problem with what Forester calls my "knack," other than the physical and mental havoc it causes, is that it comes and goes when it feels like it, and rarely warns me of things that might want to hurt me. Not that I expect it to do so: I am at its service and not vice versa, but I can hardly do the work assigned to me if I'm dead, now can I?

Anyhow, after starting my affidavit for the warrant, I needed the exact address for the old meatpacking building, but the record for it was unavailable. I called Charlton in Records, and he told me—sounding as though he was frowning—that he was going to have to transfer me to someone named Aricelle.

March, who watched and listened to all of this with half-lidded eyes, murmured, "This is almost more excitement than I can bear."

Aricelle, whose voice had a lovely, completely unplaceable blue-silver accent, said she had an anticipatory search warrant on file for the address in question, and if the matter was exigent, she'd get the appropriate people together to expedite a telephonic search warrant.

"Sure," I said, trying to recall the last time I'd heard someone use the word "exigent." Certainly not someone with a voice like that.

"Then please stay on the line, Detective Daw."

I looked over at March. He shook his head, then wrote on my notepad _If this is what your days are usually like, no wonder you volunteered for babysitting duty._

. 

Less than an hour later we were at Lower Sixth and Union.

"The city bought this?" March said, taking off his sunglasses so that he could look up at the building we were about to enter. 

"It's a landmark," I said. "Designed and built by the obscure Victorian architect Frank P. Knabel-Long."

March scoffed. "With a name like that, and designs like this, no wonder he's obscure." 

Rising out of the city block, the building's base was three stories of featureless stone, broken only by a single door. Above the mausoleum-like lower levels were six stories of increasingly elaborate windows and architectural details, culminating in sculpted grotesques lurking under the deep, shadowed overhangs of the roof. The overall effect was of a beleaguered lighthouse, overrun by creatures that had crept from the fog-shrouded shallows around it. 

March, eerily echoing my thoughts, asked, "Is it, like, a visual metaphor for evolution or something?" He grimaced and pointed. "And why are those octopus tentacles up there? If this is supposed to be the ascent of man, somebody should have told him octopuses don't belong on the roof." 

A wisp of breeze trailed clammy fingertips across the back of my neck as I peered up at the eaves. "I doubt they're tentacles. More likely they're vines and berries. William Morris influence."

March tucked his sunglasses into his coat. "Why bother to make a slaughterhouse so fancy?"

"It's what they did back then." I took out the key Aricelle had couriered over and used it on the padlock of the outer chain-link fence.

Closing the gate behind us, we walked around the perimeter of the building until we found the only entrance that wasn't bricked up, a huge steel entry door with an electronic lock. I entered the access code, and we were inside.

"This place is kind of a mess," March said, following close behind me as we stepped into the dark, foul smelling interior. "Why don't they just tear it down and build something new?"

"That might happen," I replied quietly. I started picturing the torrents of blood that had washed through the sluices when this place had been in operation, and despite myself, I shuddered. 

"Then again, some people see beauty in the old and run down," March said. "Sometimes old things have an enduring quality, of strength that has stood the test of—"

"Are you done?"

"I guess so."

I pulled the inner door open, and we stepped inside.

It had been naive to think I'd find anything in a place this old and big other than a severe case of the creeping jitters. 

The building as originally built had had at least ten floors above ground, but now the center of the building was a cavernous open space, with only the rinds of landings and staircases clinging to the outer walls to mark what had been there before. Looking up through the dimly lit succession of openings, I almost felt as though I was falling upward into a gargantuan maw lined with ragged stone teeth.

"Either someone had fun with dynamite," March said, "or something really big stood up in here."

His words echoed and echoed. Did I hear something moving above us?

I put my finger over my lips, signalling March to be quiet, and then pointed upwards.

He nodded.

Before we moved, however, I took out my phone and texted to the number that Aricelle had provided _Maybe something here. Backup?_ Wincing as the phone chimed its success, I turned down the volume of my phone, and then slid it back in my pocket, pleased to see that March was silencing his phone without my having asked.

And then we stood there. The silence stretched out, became thick and suffocating. I couldn't tell if I was hearing our breathing, or the stifled breathing of someone else.

The hell with it. I wasn't going to put March in danger. Even if—no, actually _because_ —his father seemed to want him dead, I was going to make sure he got safely back to the Turd if I had to tie him up and stuff him in the trunk, and then I was going to come back and figure out why I'd been led here.

I squeezed March's arm slightly to get his attention, then pointed to the exit. 

He tilted his head questioningly to one side, and mouthed _Out?_

I nodded.

With almost comically exaggerated care, he took one silent step after another until he was at the inner door.

As he reached for the handle I turned to follow him, and that's when it struck.

I thought I was having a stroke or a heart attack at first, because my right arm and shoulder went numb, but just about the time I realized that no, heart attack pain would be in my left arm, March turned and let out a watery scream.

I didn't understand why he was doing that until my left leg gave out: as I fell, I saw what had grabbed my shoulder.

It was vaguely human shaped in that it had two legs, two arms, and a head attached to a central mass, but the similarity to a human ended there. Its legs were leathery cylinders ending in stumpy toes; its arms were thick vines or tentacles, ending in a clump of preternaturally long fingers; and its head—dear God, its head! A band, studded with dozens of dull ruby cabochons, wrapped around where its eyes should have been, and instead of a nose or mouth, it had an obscene proboscis shaped like an elephant's trunk. As I watched, it regurgitated a white, pasty substance from this appendage into a pouch on its belly.

March, having found his voice, screamed, "Get away from him!" He held out his phone, and turned on a bright white light.

The creature made a sickening gurgling sound and took a few steps back, raising its arms defensively. 

"Run," I croaked. "Run, Vem."

March, the idiot, stepped over me and shoved the light at the creature again. 

This must have confused it, because instead of attacking it retreated another step and then simply stood there, its fingers frantically clenching and unclenching.

An odd sensation was climbing up my ankles, a heavy numbing, as if I was rebar and the cement truck was pouring its load on me. "Get out," I gasped. "Get out now." How long would it be until Aricelle sent backup?

If she sent backup.

March took a step back, putting my body between the monster and himself, but then instead of doing the sensible thing and continuing to back up toward the exit, he transferred the phone to his other hand, then stooped and groped under my jacket until he found the gun in my holster. 

Did he even know how to work the safety?

Apparently he did. He shot the monster in the face, in its row of cabochon eyes. With a horrible shriek, the creature fled.

"I'm going to try to get you outside," he said. "Before it decides to come back." He started to shove his phone in his pocket, but then stopped to prop it on a rock so that it continued to illuminate the area. "Can you walk?"

"No." The concrete was at my knees.

Grabbing my ankles, March dragged me to the inner door, then flung it open and quickly pulled me though.

I heard a distant moan of outrage echo through the building as the door slammed shut.

March then maneuvered us though the outer door and away from the building. Propping me up against the chain link fence, he fished my phone out. "A. Malibu sent you a text saying 'OTW'," he said as he tapped the screen.

"Good. Who are you calling?"

"911."

"Aricelle's backup will be here before then."

He said, "Well, just in case they're not." 

After telling the dispatcher our location, and that I was conscious but couldn't walk, he answered several questions that I couldn't hear with only a yes or no, then said, "Yes, but it's not slurred." He then asked me to smile, and told the dispatcher, "A little bit." Finally he asked me if I could raise my arms.

The left one went up; the right one didn't budge. 

"Only one," he told them, then listened intently for a minute or so before ending the call and putting the phone back in my pocket. "They're on the way," he said.

"What did they say?"

"That you probably had a stroke, that I shouldn't let you fall asleep, and that I can't give you any medicine, food, or drink."

"Okay," I said. "But you know damn well I didn't have a stroke."

"You don't know that," he said, sounding more than a little shrill. "Seeing something like that could give anyone a stroke."

"I wonder if I have the mark now?" I said.

"I'll check when they get you to the hospital," he said. 

"Take a picture," I said. "And make sure to note the time it was when—" I suddenly couldn't think of the word.

"When you got grabbed?" March said. "Yeah." He brushed the hair off my forehead. "You aren't getting sleepy, are you?"

"No." The concrete was halfway up my thighs. 

"So what do your initials stand for?" he asked.

Did I mention that it's no fun if you wave the white flag too soon? "Is your middle name really June?" I asked.

"Way to change the subject," he said with a crooked half-smile. "Yeah, June was my mother's name."

I noted the use of the past tense. "Katsella Hippocrates," I said.

"Get out," he said. "Your parents were hippies?"

"No, blue collar as they come. They spent their imagination budget naming me."

"I've never heard of anyone else named Katsella," March said, "Is it a family name, or something?"

"Or something."

"Does anyone at work know?" he asked. "I'll bet Haldis does."

"HR knows." The concrete was curling around my waist.

'I don't understand why it didn't attack me," he said suddenly, glancing at the steel door as if he expected the creature to burst through it at any moment. "I mean, I was right there. But it left me alone."

Right there. Left me. _Right. Left._ March had pulled the gun out of my holster with his left hand. He'd even transferred the phone to his other hand first. "Are you left-handed?" I asked.

This question puzzled March. "No, I'm a cross-dominant ambidexter. It's the only one percent I'm proud to be in. But don't tell my dad."

"Why?"

"Because he thinks he beat the left-handedness out of me when I was little. According to him lefties are aberrations that need to be filtered out of the gene pool." 

"So you kept using your left hand in secret?"

"Yeah," he said, uncertainly. "Why are you asking?"

"When you get back to the Citizens' Services Building," I said, "have Jansson show you how to check if there's a correlation between the victim's dominant hand and which side their bruise was on."

"Why?"

"Because if you don't have a clearly dominant hand, maybe that thing didn't attack you because it couldn't decide which of your shoulders to grab."

"That's… that's fucking _brilliant,"_ he said. His eyes were wide with admiration, but then they narrowed. "Wait, why would Haldis show me—oh no," he said. "No, no. You are _not_ skipping out on me, Katsella!"

There were tears welling up in his lovely blue-green eyes. Not a sight I wanted to go out on, but the concrete was oozing across my midriff now; my right arm felt completely encased. 

"If you knew it was here, why did you come?" he asked. The tears were starting to leap over the edge, like pearl divers off a cliff.

"Hey, stop that," I said, and he swiped his face with his sleeve. "Look, I certainly didn't know about… whatever that creature was." 

"But you had a hunch?"

What the hell. It didn't matter anymore whether or not I kept it secret. "Sure."

"Do you get hunches a lot?"

"I wouldn't say a lot."

"So you're psychic?"

"No," I said. "It's never that clear."

"Does Captain Forester know about your gift?" March asked. "Does Haldis?"

"I've never said anything outright, but they're smart enough to suspect." I needed to explain that it wasn't a gift, that I was ashamed of the visions because they felt like cheating, but the concrete was up to my armpits and I was having trouble finding breath for the words.

"You can't die!" March said suddenly. "If you do I'll ravage your corpse! I'll strip you naked and do unspeakable things! Naughty, naughty things! And I'll take pictures and post them everywhere!"

"En… joy," I managed to say, as the weight of the concrete crunched my rib-cage; and then there were flashing lights, and shouting, and a mask came down over my nose as I was lifted into darkness.

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_© 2020 First post 17 June 2020; revised 21 September 2020_


	3. Chapter 3

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Hazy memories. Words mostly, words that don't make sense: _Chognar Fawn. Feeder. White Pork Sauce._

Which is to say, I woke up in a strange hospital room to find March sitting next to my bed telling jokes to Haldis, Forester, and a couple of white-coats. There was an IV in my arm, and the right half of my body was in a shiny black cast studded with lights and wires. "Where am I?" I asked. "County West?" 

They all jumped a little. "Special private facility," Forester said.

I frowned. A special private facility for people who had been covered in concrete after being grabbed by an elephant monster? 

"They don't know what caused it yet," Forester said to me.

"What it?" I asked.

One of the doctors—obviously the leader, as he was holding the clipboard—said, "The myelin sheath surrounding the nerves in your right shoulder and arm is severely depleted. We're still running tests to identify the mechanism of deterioration."

"Well, I hope you figure it out soon," Forester said, "because whoever did this to him probably caused the deaths of at least twenty-six other people."

The doctor glanced at her, wrote something on my chart, then said, "Don't stay too long. He's still very weak." And then he and the other white coats left.

"Why does half of me look like Darth Vader?" 

"High-tech treatment to slow down or reverse the nerve damage," Haldis said.

"Nerve damage?"

"Whatever you were injected with," Forester said, "the explosion apparently made it worse."

"Injected?" I said. "Explosion?" I felt like a parrot.

I looked at March, but he'd widened his eyes and shook his head just a fraction. Warning me to keep quiet? "You probably don't remember," he said solicitously. "You were passed out by then."

"Why did it kill the other people and not me?"

"Because we got you here in time," Haldis said. "Thanks to Aricelle and Hoo."

I wondered what painkillers I was on, because this made no sense. "Hoo? Hoo who?"

"It's her little joke," March said, looking faintly abashed. "Vem means 'who' in Swedish."

 _Vem?_ She was not only calling him Vem, but they had a little linguistic in-joke about it? How long had I been unconscious?

"The nerve damage apparently took longer to ramp up for the other victims," Forester said, "but when it did, it made them incapable of driving their cars or defending themselves."

"Or just terrified them to death," March interjected, "since they had no idea what was happening."

"They'll be bringing in a couple of specialists to help with your rehabilitation," Haldis said. 

Attempting to lighten the mood, I said, "I take it I'm not cleared to return to work?"

Forester shook her head and, looking unhappy, said, "No, not yet. Just… take your time, and rest."

Haldis was avoiding looking at me. This did not make me feel at all restful. 

March must have noticed, because he said, "Hey, Chandra, Haldis? Can you give us a minute?" As they filed out and closed the door, March pulled the chair around to my good side. 

"Injection?" I said. "Explosion? Calling people by their first names? What the hell is going on here, March?"

He took a deep breath. "Yeah, okay, right. There's a lot to catch you up on. Okay, so, first off, only me and the doctors and Aricelle know about the thing that attacked you," he said. "The official story for Haldis and your boss is that you were injected with some exotic bio-agent or chemical weapon. Obviously Forester would want to keep a lid on that anyhow, because, well, even if part of the story is fake, there's still potential for wide-spread public panic if it gets out."

I was disgusted. "Fake story? You're _lying_ to them, March."

"And you've been lying to them for years," he snapped back, and then immediately looked contrite. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. There's no judgment here, it's just that holding back the truth was the right thing to do." 

"I like how you decided this all by yourself," I said, "which, in case you missed it, means I do not like it. At all."

"Well, for your information I wasn't the one to decide," he said. "Aricelle concocted the story for your boss. She convinced me that it was okay because, with the thing dead, we wouldn't see any more cases."

"How do you know it's dead?"

"Because of the explosion."

I looked at the ceiling. It too had many holes.

"What's the last thing you remember?" March asked.

"You talking about your plans to violate my corpse," I said. "For future reference, necrophilia a felony in many jurisdictions."

"Right, so just after that Aricelle's team showed up—oh, she sent flowers, by the way." He pointed at a huge arrangement of orchids and weird foliage on the window sill. "Anyhow, Aricelle's medical team took us away before the other ambulance got there. They gave me a sedative and I woke up in here, in a bed next to you." He paused, considered what he'd just said, waggled his eyebrows, then added. "I'm kidding! It was a different bed. A second bed. In case you were worried."

I had not been. "And the explosion?" I prompted. 

"Oh, right. The explosion will be the cover story for the public about how you got hurt."

"Concentric circles of bullshit," I said. "So who's going to be Satan? or will we take turns?"

He stared at me. "Yeah, I get it. Milton, Father of Lies, yadda yadda. But seriously, with everything else going on in the world right now, would do you really want to tell people there are actual nightmare monsters roaming around sucking the nerves out of people's arms—"

"Wait, what?"

"That's what the thing did to you." He made a flapping gesture at his chest. "That gross white stuff it squirted into its belly pouch? That was like, ganglia paste. From your arm."

I hated that he had a point, because now I had to throw out my spectacular froth of righteous indignation. "Charming," I said. "No, I guess we probably shouldn't tell the general public about that."

"Well, of course we can't! And anyhow, the explosion story works because there actually was an explosion after we left. Gas main, I guess? Took out the entire block. It was on the news and everything. It was really bad; the fire department needed three days to put it out. They had to seal off a bunch of streets around it because of the toxic fumes. It was a whole mess."

I looked at him and couldn't believe that he was naive enough to think the explosion was an accident, but I suppose it was good that Aricelle had taken care of the nerve-sucker. How exactly she had known to do that was something I could follow up later. "Three days? How long have I been in here?"

"About a week?" he said, sounding as if this was an insignificant detail. "Anyhow, back to what I was saying before, as soon as I woke up I called Haldis and told her we had to check the handedness of the faux-tat victims, and you were right! There was a 100%—correlation? Is that the word?"

I nodded.

"Between the handedness and the bruises."

I had a feeling March was building up to something. "And what else do you have to tell me? Out with it."

"Right," he said, smoothing the blanket. "Well, the short version is that now everyone thinks I helped solve the case and saved your life, which technically is the truth."

I frowned. I had the same feeling a trout must have when a juicy weird feathery bug looking thing lands on the surface of the water right above it.

"Okay, so, Forester already is worried you won't get better, and wants you to retire from active duty or whatever they call it, because she doesn't want you to get hurt any more. None of us do," he said, briefly touching my hand. "Aricelle told Forester to keep you on the payroll as a consultant to analyze data. And no, I didn't tell Aricelle about your hunches," he said quickly, "because she knew about them already. She says she's known for a long time, but has respected that you wanted to keep it secret." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Haldis hasn't said anything, but she's a smart lady. I think she figured it out a long time ago. Anyhow, Aricelle thought we could still make use of your hunches by letting me be your beard. The story would be that my psychic abilities—"

"Your _what?"_ I then said a word I hadn't let pass my lips in a long time.

"My psychic abilities," March said firmly, "were somehow triggered by being around you, which will explain why I didn't display them before. It'll also account for why I'll need to keep visiting you; the story will be that I'm getting my psychic battery re-charged, but really you'll be telling about any hunches you've had, and I'll make sure the information gets used."

I glared at him. I was going to have to ask this Aricelle—if I ever met her—what entitled her to make so many "suggestions," because from where I was propped up it looked like she and March were making decisions about my future without consulting me.

March squirmed. "Isn't the point to stop bad things from happening?"

I grunted.

"And we make a great team, don't we?"

I tried to shrug. A painful mistake I wouldn't make a second time.

"Hey, this should cheer you up. Since that old Knabel-Long building was demolished by the explosion, they're finally green-lighting those construction projects. The first one is going to be called The Agnodike Women's Center. Did you know she was the first woman doctor in ancient Greece?"

"Can't say I did."

"Aw, c'mon, don't look so grumpy," he said. "This is a mega-win, right? A win-win-win. The public good is served in a bunch of ways, your secret is still as secret as it was before, and you'll be giving me a purpose in life."

"As a consulting psychic? That'll vex your father no end."

"Oh, I guess you're right," he said, slitting his eyes and smoothing his little goatee as smugly as a butter-licking cat. "That angle hadn't even occurred to me."

"Don't give me that horseshit," I said. "I'm on to you."

"Plus, spending more time together will give me more chances to make you fall under my spell," he said, flashing a dazzling grin. 

"Not gonna happen, Vem," I said. "Your flirt game is wasted on me."

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I think it'll keep your silver fox skills sharp. You never know when something you'll want to catch will come along."

"I doubt it."

"If you say so," he said. "After all, you're the one with the psychic powers," but I knew he didn't really mean it, not a god-damned word.

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_~ The End ~_

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©2020 _First posted 30 June 2020; revised 3 October 2020_

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading Raymond Chandler lately, and I think a bit of Philip Marlowe rubbed off on Daw. Oops?
> 
> The phrase "brown morning potion" was used in _The Dragon Prince._ If you're going to steal, steal from something good.
> 
> A thank you to my beta Nalanzu, who didn't run away when I threw big chunks of this at them.


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